actually had this conversation with my other half last weekend. we were driving in pretoria, and got chatting about the oodles of churches and the general mentality bound to them.i've had that 'seeing the light at the end of the tunnel' experience. i had flowers and flying though starry wormhole experiences as well, but that was with some herbal assitance i think, that by the time one is one her/his way out, and the heart is taking strain, you're losing blood, you are in shock, your system is flooded with every chemical it can produce, adrenaline etc. and your brain is being deprived of oxygen. i recon your nerve-endings are going to be firing off all sorts of weird stuff.i've had, for instance, seen haloes around things, starts in front of my eyes, shadows were there were none. if you pass out, you see all kinds of interresting shit.and, naturally, if you live to tell the tale, your brain tries to piece together things in whatever way it can. its like trying to piece together a broken antique vase, but you have no idea what goes where, so you build whatever you imagine it to be. nevermind if its nothing like what it had been originally. here, i think, the case is, you find a whole bunch of pieces, that was part of nothing before, but your mind has the natural need to make sense out of it. so it hashes something together. and viola!! god, pearly gates....

i've had that 'seeing the light at the end of the tunnel' experience. i had flowers and flying though starry wormhole experiences as well, but that was with some herbal assitance

Hmmm let me guess….can’t be Origanum hey

I myself had a “near death” experience when I was much younger and at that time, couldn’t make out what the “Omie” on the microphone was prattling on about, shittish sound system and all.Apparently there was a massive side current, which I and 2 others had to find out the hard way!My entire life flashed before my eyes as my brain and body went into a hell of a shock, (as sea water isn’t really my favourite quencher)…. but the blood quickly flushed back to my face after they saved me from the pearly gates…..as my bikini top wasn’t in place anymore ugh well sh!t happens

One of the chemicals secreted into the blood (along with adrenaline and the others) during severe trauma is called dimethyltryptamine (or DMT). DMT is a powerful hallucinogenic and is mainly responsible for people who "see Jesus" or "meet dead loved-ones" during near-death experiences. Since the sub-conscious cannot tell the difference between reality and fantasy, these hallucinations are recalled later as being genuine.

One of the reasons for the "white light" is severely dilated pupils during trauma, all the things GothCatBabe said, as well as, in some cases, the effects of DMT.